Photography/Realism & Later 19thC Art/(post)Impressionism

pastels (The Tub)

(dry sticks of colored powder, which are applied like chalk), a medium that had been previously used for sketching and preliminary work. Later in his life, Degas liked working with pastels because the medium allowed him to further develop his treatment of the line. Nudes were also a favorite subject of the artist in his later years. Yet, in Impressionistic fashion, Degas' nudes were never in traditional poses as we can see from The Tub. This pastel work was shown in the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, and it is one of a series of seven paintings produced by Degas in the mid 1880s on the theme of women at their baths. His minute observation of their intimate, everyday gestures is a far cry from the traditional romantic scenes of ladies at their toilette. The still life of toilet articles below, with a distorted Japanese-style perspective (see Lesson 9.07), and its plunging view, make this pastel one of the most audacious and accomplished of Degas' works on the modern theme of the woman in her bathtub. The shifting perspective looks down on the model in the tub, but shows the objects on the shelf from the side. Pay special attenton to the flatness of the table compared to the three-dimensional quality of the bather. This changing point of view shows the influence of Japanes prints, which were flooding Europe since Japan had opened its doors to outsiders in the 1850's.

Still Life in Studio. LouisJacques-Mandé Daguerre. 1837 C.E. Daguerreotype.

One of the first plates that Daguerre made after perfecting his process was Still Life in Studio (Image 110), wherein he captured great detail and tones of light and shadow. The inspiration for his arrangement came from Dutch vanitas still lifes, which were still life paintings that included objects that symbolized the inevitability of death and the vanity of earthly pleasures. These paintings evolved from simple pictures of skulls and other symbols of death painted on the reverse side of paintings during the Renaissance. The new medium was perfect for images like this, as the three-dimensional forms of the sculptures, the baskets, and the pieces of cloth rise clearly in high relief from the flat surface. Daguerre carefully arranged the objects so that their textures and shapes would be clear. Although Daguerre could not alter anything within the image the way a painter could, he was able to suggest a symbolic meaning through his choice of objects. The sculptural and architectural fragments implicate that even art is temporary, or vanitas.

Georges Seurat - A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886)

Seurat's signature work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886) depicts city dwellers gathered at a park on La Grande Jatte (literally, "the big platter"), an island in the River Seine. All kinds of people stroll, lounge, sail, and fish in the park. The artist visited La Grande Jatte many times, making drawings and more than 30 oil sketches to prepare for the final work. With his precise method and technique, Seurat conceived of his painting as a reform of Impressionism. The precise contours, geometric shapes, and measured proportions and distances in Seurat's masterpiece as well as the work's monumental size contrast significantly with the small, spontaneous canvases of Impressionism. Over the past several decades, many scholars have attempted to explain the meaning of this great composition. For some, it shows the growing middle class at leisure. Others see it as a representation of social tensions between modern city dwellers of different social classes, all of whom gather in the same public space, but do not communicate or interact.

Another interesting, but shortlived, movement in the later half of the nineteenth century was the so-called **Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood**

This group of English painters and poets came together in 1848 in reaction to what they considered to be the rote, stale, and stagnant state of British art. Accordingly, the brotherhood looked away from the increasingly industrial age in which they lived to the beauty, sincerity, and relative simplicity of Italian painting prior to Raphael, whom they saw as the fountainhead of academism. Despite their predilection for simplicity, they were highly meticulous in detail, employing Realist techniques. Eventually their painting became as artificial as the historical painting they had organized to protest, and the movement died before the end of the century. The Pre-Raphaelites did not find their inspirations in contemporaneous scenes, but rather in Biblical, classical, literary, or historical sources, as seen in the work Ophelia, which was painted by one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Everett Millais (1829-1896). He depicts the tragic drowning suicide of Ophelia from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Certainly, the Realists would have objected to the fanciful subject, but Millais' attention to detail is above reproach. The artist, for example, spent four months painting the background vegetation for this work. The exquisite flowers floating on the surface of the water are also not simply decorative and naturalistic; they were carefully chosen for their traditional symbolic meanings. After finishing the background, Millais returned to London to paint his model, Elizabeth Siddal, posing in a bath full of water.

George Seurat (post impressionism)/ POINTILISM

Using newly discovered optical and color theories, Georges Seurat (1859-1891) rendered his subject by placing tiny, precise brush strokes of different colors close to one another so that they blend at a distance. Art critics subsequently named this technique Divisionism, or Pointillism.

The Starry Night. Vincent van Gogh. 1889 C.E. Oil on canvas.

Van Gogh's most famous painting, however, is The Starry Night (Image 120). Van Gogh had been contemplating the subject of a starry sky for some time before he painted The Starry Night in late June or early July of 1889. In letters to his family and friends, he advised them that it was a particular challenge for him. While he enjoyed painting outdoor scenes and nature, the use of contrasting color and the complications of outdoor painting at night made it more difficult. He had painted only a few night scenes, and he realized that he would need to do some work from home and from his imagination for this kind of painting. His first example of the night sky, Starry Night over the Rhône (1888) was done outdoors with a gas lamplight, but Starry Night was likely created in the studio. In The Starry NIght, the artist paints a night sky that is a field of roiling energy. Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order. Connecting earth and sky is the flame-like cypress, a tree traditionally associated with graveyards and mourning. But death was not ominous for van Gogh. "Looking at the stars always makes me dream," he said, "Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star." The artist wrote of his experience to his brother Theo: "This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." This morning star, or Venus, may be the large white star just left of center in The Starry Night. The hamlet, on the other hand, is invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands. The painting, like its daytime companion, The Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun, is rooted in imagination and memory. Leaving behind the Impressionist doctrine of truth to nature in favor of restless feeling and intense color, as in this highly charged picture, van Gogh made his work a touchstone for all subsequent expressionist painting. In 1888, Van Gogh was hospitalized at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, and asylum and clinic for the mentally ill near the village of Saint-Rémy. He had a private room, and some of the tree placements, as well as the constellations are similar to what he may have seen from his window, but he also had a small studio for painting, which looked out upon the asylum's garden. It has been assumed that he composed The Starry Night using pieces of already completed works combined with his imagination and memory. Tthe church spire in the painting is more Dutch than French, and is likely a combination of several church spires he had depicted much earlier while living in the Netherlands. Van Gogh viewed the work as an exercise, only mentioning it briefly in letters as a simply "study of night," and the lines are exaggerated and contorted, deliberately stylized, as Van Gogh said, "like...ancient woodcuts." He was experimenting with a style that was inspired by the thick outlines and simple forms of medieval woodcuts. He didn't try to represent the sky's appearance, but rather, channeled his own feelings about the universe, whirling and spinning in much the same manner as his turbulent mind. The church may be an attempt to express his conflicted ideas about religion, and the earth and humanity huddles darkly under the explosive sky. The painting well illustrates Van Gogh's resolve to "use color...to express [him]self forcibly, and the color and brushstrokes reflect both his depressive state and his unsettled mind.

watercolor

Watercolor or watercolour, also aquarelle, a diminutive of the Latin for water, is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork. (WINSLOW HOMER elevated the medium of watercolor to the status of fine art)

Pointilism

also known as Divisionism (associated with George Seurat) a theory and technique developed by the neo-impressionists, based on the principle that juxtaposed dots of pure color, as blue and yellow, are optically mixed into the resulting hue, as green, by the viewer.

en plein air

outdoors

Realism

was characterized by a reaction against the strict norms of Neoclassicism and the theatricality of Romanticism in favor of unidealized scenes of everyday life, painted as they are observed. The term"realism" was used by the leader of the movement Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) in describing his own work. Courbet is also quoted as saying, "painting is essentially a concrete art and must be applied to real and existing things," which defines the Realism movement perfectly.

The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel (El Valle de México desde el Cerro de Santa Isabel). Jose María Velasco. 1882 C.E. Oil on canvas.

After the war of independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico looked for ways to establish its identity, and one of them was through art. Dictator Lopez de Santa Ana re-established the art academy, and the practice of national landscape painting began in earnest. Jose Maria Velasco's landscapes presented a wonderful open quality that make his work stand out from those of his contemporaries. In The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel (El Valle de México desde el Cerro de Santa Isabel) (Image 118), the viewer sees Lake Texcoco and Mexico city toward the background. Velasco's home was located at the foot of the small hill in the middle of the canvas, which was also an important colonial sacred site, where Juan Diego first saw the Virgin of Guadalupe (previously discussed in Lesson 6.28) in 1531. While the artist created at least a dozen images of this same view between 1875 and 1892, this one is the most famous. Velasco made so many paintings of these hills that he was eventually able to paint details and rock formations from memory. Velasco's work follows some ideas of German Romanticism, in the tradition of artists such as Casper David Friedrich and Joseph Anton Koch. The figures within Velasco's paintings are not just to enhance the artwork, but they have a very special relationship with the scenery that they inhabit. Here, two Indians are moving from the city to the country, illustrating the socio-economic relationship between people and their native land. Their clothing helps to enhance the national iconography of the land and its people as well. Here, daily life blends with romanticism and national pride to create a monumental masterpiece.

Barbizon School

An important group of Realist painters were the so-called Barbizon school. Their name derives from the small French village in the Fontainebleau forest to which the artists moved in order to be closer to their subjects. Led by Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867), whose works may be viewed at The Athenaeum, the Barbizon school is characterized by unidealized and detailed landscapes, which had a profound impact on the next art historical period, Impressionism. Another famous resident of the village of Barbizon was Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875). However, the artist is not generally considered a realist as he painted landscapes that were more "natural" than anything else. Yet, Corot did not sentimentalize the peasant or farm labor. He is also recognized for the serenity in and precision of his compositions, as seen in The Forest of Fontainebleau. Corot's manipulation of tonal contrasts (as opposed to drawing) will be extremely influential on the Post-Impressionists as well.

Olympia. Édouard Manet. 1863 C.E. Oil on canvas.

Another even more controversial work is the artist's "Olympia," once again featuring the courtesan Victorine Meurend. Here, Manet reworked the traditional theme of the female nude, using a strong, uncompromising technique with harsh shifts in tonality. HIs style and presentation shocked the art public and would profoundly impact the later Impressionists. When Edouard Manet's painting Olympia (Image 115) hung in the Salon of Paris, it was met with laughter, criticism, and ridicule. The people, the art critics, and the press attacked it. Guards had to be positioned next to the painting to protect it until it was moved to a spot well above a large doorway that was out of reach of the public. With Olympia, Manet rebels against the art establishment in France at the time, the Salon. Taking Titian's Venus of Urbino (Image 080) as his model, Manet creates a work he thinks will grant him a place in the company of the great artists. Instead of following the accepted practice in French art, which rules that paintings of the figure (especially nudes) should be modeled on historical, mythical, or biblical themes, Manet chose to paint a woman of his time period -- not a feminine ideal, but a real woman who was also a courtesan. He paints her in his own style: in place of the flawless shading of great masters, his forms are painted fast, in rough brushstrokes clearly visible on the surface. Instead of the carefully constructed perspective that leads the eye deep into the space of the painting, Manet offers a picture frame flattened into two planes. The foreground is the glowing creamy body of Olympia on a white bed; the background is so dark that the maid bringing her flowers can hardly be seen. While the dark and light create a stark contrast, the lack of contrast between the figures and their surrounding areas met great criticism. Part of the controversy is that Manet presented the nude as naked and not an angelic female form. In painting his reality , Manet challenged the cherished function of art in France, which was to glorify history, and created what some considered the first modern painting. Again his model, Victorine Meurent, is shown as a courtesan, a woman whose body is a commodity. While middle-and- upper class gentlemen of the time did frequent courtesans and prostitutes, they do not want to be confronted with one in a gallery. A real woman with an indifferent stare looks from the canvas, confronting the viewer, and it was a confrontation that French society in 1865 was perhaps not prepared to have. The subject matter scandalized the public, even though Manet quoted numerous formal and iconographic references, such as Titian's Venus of Urbino (Image 080), and the theme of the odalisque with her black slave had already been handled by Ingres, among others. Yet, the picture here portrays the cold and prosaic reality of a truly contemporary subject: Venus has become a prostitute, challenging the viewer with her calculating look. This profanation of the idealized nude, the very foundation of academic tradition, provoked a violent reaction. Critics attacked the "yellow-bellied odalisque" whose modernity was nevertheless defended by a small group of Manet's contemporaries with writer Emile Zola at their head.

invention of photography

Another major advance that impacted the world of art in the nineteenth century was the invention of photography. Initially, artists, especially landscape and portrait painters, saw the camera as threat to their livelihood. This was an unfounded fear as patrons would quickly realize the difference between "camera vision" and "human vision"). Other artists, such as Delacroix and Ingres, embraced the camera from the outset, recognizing the possibilities that photography could offer. The impact of the invention of photography, too, played a major role in the development of the next great art historical period, Realism.

The Coiffure. Mary Cassatt. 1890-1891 C.E. Drypoint and aquatint

Cassatt, inspired by these Japanese woodblock prints, made hundreds of etchings during the summer and fall of 1890 and 1891. Her work The Coiffure (Image 121) was inspired by Kitagawa Utamaro woodblock print called Takashima Ohisa Using Two Mirrors to Observe Her Coiffure. Cassatt's print combines elements of the Japanese ukiyo-e print with traditional themes of women bathing and the odalisque. The term "coiffure" creates a very specific image: one of wealthy women participating in the ritual of grooming, dressing, and preparing their hair. "La Coiffure" was part of a specific lifestyle, generally one where wealthy women were carefully tended to by servants. This woman, however, is alone, showing that perhaps she is a working woman preparing to begin her day. She sits in an armchair in front of a mirror, with her head down and arching her back. While she evokes images Titian's Venus of Urbino or Ingres' Odalisque, both images of lovely women made to be gazed upon by a male audience, this woman is not sexualized. Instead, she is a compositional element in the picture. This is an exercise in clarity and tone where the woman's body is realized just as the other patterns in the room. Of great interest are the color palette and medium Cassatt chose. With a limited color palette of rose, brown, and white, she could both mimic the quality of pastels, which she liked to use, but still focus on form and clarity of line more than pastels generally allow. The process of drypoint and aquatint sketching also allowed for hazy shading and soft tones with a bold sharpness of line. Also, using etching allowed her to make many images from a single plate, making her works more accessible for a larger audience.

The Stone Breakers. Gustave Courbet. 1849 C.E. (destroyed in 1945). Oil on canvas.

Courbet's The Stone Breakers (Image 113) depicts the life of rural laborers, showing his deep concern for the plight of the poor. The painting was made just one year after Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto. In the work, the two figures, one young, one much older, are set against a low hill that encompasses nearly the entire canvas, making them seem trapped in their environment, isolated both physically and economically. One figure seems too young, and the other seems too old for such difficult labor, but Courbet, in showing what was real, wanted to provide an accurate depiction of French rural life. The palette of dirty grays and browns conveys the dirty and menial nature of the task, one reserved for some of the lowest members of French society. Courbet even depicts this in his painting style, using rough brushwork to portray the difficult task. Using this style of brushwork, he clearly rejects the polished, refined Neoclassicist style that encompassed most French art at the time. Another key aspect of Courbet's technique is that he gives equal attention to both the subjects and foreground as he does the background of the painting, something that was unusual for most art before Realism. Instead of a carefully selected and organized composition, Courbet gives us a more accurate depiction of what the scene actually looked like, making it feel more "real." Unflaggingly honest, Courbet, much like Caravaggio in the seventeenth century, violated rules of artistic propriety by setting every detail of his lowborn workers' wretched state before the viewer on a grand scale (the figures are life size). Unlike Caravaggio however, Courbet's work is neither dramatic or sentimental, in Realist manner.

The Horse in Motion. Eadweard Muybridge. 1878 C.E. Albumen print.

Eadweard Muybridge was a British Realist photographer and scientist who settled in San Francisco in the 1850s and quickly established a reputation with his photographs of the western United States. In 1872, he was asked by Leland Stanford, the governor of California, to help settle a bet about whether or not a horse's feet were ever all off the ground during a gallop. Muybridge proved that they were through his use of sequential photography in The Horse in Motion (Image 117). This began Muybridge's studies of stages of animal and human motion, things that happened too quickly for the human eye to see, but that the camera was able to capture. In 1887, his studies received worthy attention in a book called Animal Locomotion. He became admired in both the fields of art and science. His motions studies influenced artists such as contemporary Edgar Degas, and Marcel Duchamp in the 20th century. Muybridge invented a device called a zoopraxiscope, which projected his image sequences, mounted on glass plates, to a screen. The result was so lifelike that viewers felt they could actually see the living, moving animals. The illusion of motion that Muybridge created was dependent upon what is called "persistence of vision," which explains that the brain continues what the eye sees for a fraction of a second after the eye sees it. Thus, when the viewers would see this rapid succession of images, it produced what appeared to be movement. This illusion is what sparked the motion-picture industry, and Muybridge's innovations in photography did much to lay the groundwork for the cinema.

why Realism?

Gustave Courbet was the leading figure of the Realist movement. Even though Courbet detested labels, he used the term realism in reference to his own works. In his dismissal of academic painting, Courbet summed up the main principal of Realist painting thusly: "I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel and I'll paint one." The Realists carefully examined their own environments and aimed to paint everyday life as it was seen, thus leading them to paint subjects that had previously been viewed as unworthy of depiction - things that were considered ordinary or unimportant. Working-class laborers, peasants, and other real people and events of the time were the subjects, and they were treated with the same seriousness and devotion that earlier artists gave to historical, mythological, or religious work. Realists argued that only the contemporary world, what people see, was "real," and thus it merited the complete attention of artists.

Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art. Honoré Daumier. 1862 C.E. Lithograph.

In Daumier's lithograph, Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art (Image 114), he responds to the growing impact of photography on art. The print humorously casts Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (known as Nadar) as a crazy scientist or absent-minded professor figure who—in his excitement to capture the perfect shot—is unwittingly about to lose his top hat. Below him, written on every building in Paris, is the word "Photographie" to reflect to growth in popularity of the medium and the rise of photography studios throughout Paris. In some ways, this satirical likeness of one of the most important photographers in Paris works to obtain the true essence of the 19th century debate over whether or not this new photography could be considered "art." When this print appeared in the journal Le Boulevard, Nadar was already famous for taking the first aerial photograph of Paris four years earlier. Daumier's created his cartoon in response to an 1862 court decision that acknowledged that photographs were indeed artworks. When Nadar later came out with a popular series of aerial photographs, Daumier seized the opportunity to mock at Nadar's claims of raising photography to the height of art. The debate about the status of photography raged between those who thought that photography eliminated the artist altogether because the work was done by machine, and others who argued that the artist mediated and remediated the image, having complete control over what the viewer experienced. Some photographers, like Julia Margaret Cameron, even purposefully manipulated photographs to show the artist's hand, blurring them and allowing fingerprints and hairs to cross the image. Daumier's caricature had implications beyond just photography as well. Historically, it likely represents some greater anxieties about industrialization and the rapid changes taking place in France at this time, as well as concerns about the sensationalism of journalism and the intrusive nature of surveillance watching over everything going on in society. A particularly interesting and kind of disturbing aspect of Daumier's lithograph is the way in which it foreshadows the modern surveillance society. There is something extremely intrusive about a man with a camera flying in a hot air balloon above the streets of Paris, and this print is successful in capturing that sentiment. Yet even more accurate is the fact that Nadar's balloon was repurposed for military use during the 1870 Siege of Paris. The photographer himself even commanded an observation balloon corps. Like most good satire, this initially funny lithograph certainly has a much more serious side.

Impressionism

In the 1860's and 1870's, Realism gave rise to the first truly revolutionary movement in art since the Renaissance, Impressionism. Formally, the Impressionist movement began in 1874 when a group of artists came together in order to show their own works, thus bypassing the rigid official system of Salon exhibits of the French Academy, which had dominated and even stifled French art since 1737). It has been said that Impressionism was not a style but a moment in time. While Realists are concerned with the present, Impressionists are concerned with a moment. The term "impressionist" is applied most frequently to paintings where the artist has aimed to capture the visual impression of a scene rather than making a "factual" record of it. Impressionist painters were fascinated by the fleeting effects of light on a scene, and they were the first artists to paint en plein air ("outdoors"). In a sense, then, an Impressionist picture is more of a sketch as opposed to a finished picture in the traditional sense. In Monet's own words, an impressionist painting is "a spontaneous work rather than a calculated one." Furthermore, Impressionistic subjects did not come from the Bible, history, or mythology, nor did they offer social commentary. The Impressionists drew their subjects from the fabric of their own middle-class lives - from the streets on which they walked, their weekend activities on the Seine, the bars and cafes that they frequented, the train station, and the surrounding countryside where they relaxed. Although Impressionism, in its purest form, lasted only a decade or so, the movement had a profound impact on the history of art, influencing all subsequent periods to some extent.

In a Villa by the Seaside by Berthe Morisot (not an imGE FROM 250 set)

In this painting, we see a fashionable woman quietly sitting on the porch of a seaside resort hotel in the summer. Her child meanwhile, having discarded a toy sailboat, looks out at the real boats on the sea. Let us now review what makes this work Impressionistic: subject: a captured moment in the everyday (middle-class) life of the artist technique: loose brushwork (for transience, "glance" effect, vivacity) color: pulsating (for transience, spontaneity, lightness, vivacity) figural arrangement: informal (for spontaneity) framing: cropped (for "glance" effect, spontaneity)

L.J.M. Dageurre/daguerreotype

L.J.M. Daguerre was an architect and set painter and designer for the theatre. He created a type of entertainment called the "diorama," where audiences saw "living paintings" consisting of actors posing in front of a painted backdrop and behind translucent curtains. Changing the lighting effects made various effects. Daguerre used a camera obscura, a darkened box that could project images, but wanted to find a more efficient procedure. He met Joseph Niépce, who had created a permanent cityscape by exposing a metal plate covered with light-sensitive coating, and the two began to experiment. After Niépce died, Daguerre discovered latent development, or bringing out the image through chemical treatment, and a better way to make the image permanent, though chemically stopping the action of light on the photographic plate. The daguerreotype was born. To make a daguerreotype, the daguerreotypist polished a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror finish. It was then treated with fumes that made its surface light sensitive. The plate was then exposed in a camera for as long as was decided to be necessary. This could be as little as a few seconds for brightly sunlit subjects or a great deal longer with less intense lighting. This created the resulting latent image (an invisible image produced by the exposure to light) on it visible by fuming it with mercury vapor. This removed its sensitivity to light by liquid chemical treatment, it was rinsed and dried it then sealed behind glass.

intro to Realism

Like the Age of the Enlightenment, the later half of the nineteenth century was a period of tremendous transformation, both historically and philosophically. It was during this period that Western civilization became so increasingly urbanized and industrialized that scholars often refer to this era as the Second Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, there was also a renewed emphasis on science and empiricism, and, as a result, Western thought generally moved away from the spiritual in the belief that, within the observable world, mankind could find answers to humanity's greatest questions and concerns. Of course, there were quite a few different interpretations of the observable world as we see from such diverse philosophies as Comte's Positivism, Darwin's Natural Selection and the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels to name but a few. These factors ultimately led to an interest in modernity, or the state of being modern. The term "modern" means that there is a recognition of history, in the midst of history, and a recognition of the current period in relation to other eras. In art, the consequence of modernity helped give rise to the next great art historical period, Realism.

Le Moulin de la Galette (not an image from the 250 set)

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was the most sensuous and lightsome of the Impressionists. His works are warm, spontaneous, and quintessentially Impressionistic in both style and theme. Le Moulin de la Galette is doubtless Renoir's most important work of the mid 1870s and was shown at the Impressionist exhibition in 1877. Though some of his friends appear in the picture, Renoir's main aim was to convey the vivacious and joyful atmosphere of this popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre. The study of the moving crowd, bathed in natural and artificial light, is handled using vibrant, brightly colored brushstrokes. This portrayal of popular Parisian life, which was a common subject with the Impressionists, incorporates an innovative style and an imposing format. Renoir's artistic ambition makes this work a masterpiece of early Impressionism.

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of artists who were influenced by Impressionism but took their art in different directions. There is no single, well-defined style of Post-Impressionism, but in general, it is less casual and more emotionally charged than Impressionist work. Post-Impressionist artists tend to either experiment with form and structure (Cezanne and Seurat) or experiment with the emotive power of color and brushwork (van Gogh and Gauguin)

beginnings of Impressionism. started w/ Monet

The name for the movement comes from a painting exhibited by Claude Monet (1840-1926) in 1874 titled Impression: Sunrise. An unfavorable critic , in an attempt to belittle the work, called it "impressionistic," meaning "unfinished" and "unpolished," which, during the era of the rigid formalism of the dominant French Academic style, was the harshest of attacks. Until the rise of the Impressionist, the term "impressionism," in artistic vocabulary, was a synonym for "sketch". Ironically, Monet and his comrades were rather pleased with "impressionistic" as a description of their work. They soon claimed the term as their own, as it denotes speed and spontaneity, coveted traits in Impressionistic works. In Impression: Sunrise, Monet sought to capture a fleeting glimpse of the port of Le Havre at sunrise on canvas. This "moment" in time, this "glance," then, is conveyed through the artist's use of rich vibrant colors and broad brushstrokes.

Mont Sainte-Victoire. Paul Cézanne. 1902-1904 C.E. Oil on canvas.

We have an even more striking example of Cezanne's formalist style in his depictions of Mount Sainte-Victoire (Image 125) near Aix-en-Provence. He painted the mountain over and over throughout the different seasons of the year. In our selection, the composition is full of lines, planes , and the colors of nature. Cezanne has created perspective and structure through color patterns rather than by traditional means. For example, note how the "cool" colors seem to recede (blues, yellows), while the "warm" hues advance (greens, browns), thus creating a three-dimensional work on a two-dimensional surface by varying colors and their intensities. Cézanne evokes a deep, panoramic scene in Mont Sainte-Victoire and the atmosphere that fills this space. But it is absolutely distinctive of his art that we also remain acutely aware of the painting as a fairly rough worked surface. Flatness of color combined with depth and we find ourselves caught between these two poles—first more aware of one, then the other. The mountainous scene is both within our reach, yet far away. Comparing the Philadelphia canvas with some of Cézanne's other views of Mont Sainte-Victoire and with photos of the actual area can help us to understand some of the perceptual subtleties and challenges of the work. Examine the left side of the mountain. Though the outermost contour is immediately apparent, inside of it, one can also discern a second line (or, more accurately, a series of lines and edges). The two converge just shy of the mountaintop. The area between this outer contour and the interior line or ridge divides a distinctive spatial plane. This slope recedes away from us and connects to the larger mountain range lying behind the sheer face. This area, and the mountain seem to gain volume. It becomes less of an irregular triangle and more of a complicated pyramid. These angles, slopes and edges are believed to be the beginning of the idea of cubism.

The Saint-Lazare Station. Claude Monet. 1877 C.E. Oil on canvas

When Monet painted his series of the Saint-Lazare Station (Image 116), he had just left Argenteuil and several years of painting in the countryside, to settle in Paris, where he began to paint urban landscapes. Monet felt that he was a painter of modern life, and even though trains and stations were not generally regarded as aesthetically pleasing subjects, this series is one of Monet's most well known. The train station was a perfect place for someone like Monet, who wanted to study the fluctuating effects of light and movement. Trains would come and go, clouds of steam enveloped the surroundings, backed by the tall buildings that were quickly becoming a part of the Parisian landscape. The constant energy of the environment was the perfect place for Monet's agitated paint application and depiction of the changing light. The clouds of steam served the same function as clouds in the sky, and swift brushstrokes portrayed the gleaming trains and the bustling crowds. Monet created seven pictures of the Saint-Lazare Station , his first series, and a deliberate attempt to explore one subject in multiple canvases capturing the light and mood of different times of day and in various atmospheric conditions. Though he loved nature, Monet was also fascinated by industrial change, particularly how industry was able to transform nature. In this series, Monet was able to ponder how steam clouds pervade the air, how sunlight filters through windows, and how people come and go in a crowd. Rumor even has it that Monet persuaded a station master to load the standing engines with coal in order to create even more steam for him to portray, illustrating how the urban environment was a kind of controlled chaos that the painter could manipulate and capture.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Paul Gauguin. 1897-1898 C.E. Oil on canvas.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Image 123) is an enormous canvas that Gauguin felt that this was one of his best works. He reputedly completed the large canvas in less than a month's time after he had spend several years living in Polynesia. Gauguin's own description of the painting, in a letter to his friend and manager Daniel de Monfried, really gives us great insight into the iconography of the painting: "It is a canvas four meters fifty in width, by one meter seventy in height. The two upper corners are chrome yellow, with an inscription on the left and my name on the right, like a fresco whose corners are spoiled with age, and which is appliquéd upon a golden wall. To the right at the lower end, a sleeping child and three crouching women. Two figures dressed in purple confide their thoughts to one another. An enormous crouching figure, out of all proportion and intentionally so, raises its arms and stares in astonishment upon these two, who dare to think of their destiny. A figure in the center is picking fruit. Two cats near a child. A white goat. An idol, its arms mysteriously raised in a sort of rhythm, seems to indicate the Beyond. Then lastly, an old woman nearing death appears to accept everything, to resign herself to her thoughts. She completes the story! At her feet a strange white bird, holding a lizard in its claws, represents the futility of words....So I have finished a philosophical work on a theme comparable to that of the Gospel.** -from "The Wisdom of Paul Gauguin—Artist," International Studio, volume 73, number 291, 69 In this statement, Gauguin makes it apparent that the painting is rife with symbolic meanings, and that the figures within might give us answers to the question that the painting poses. Stylistically, the painting is designed to resemble frescoes or icons on a gold ground. The bright yellow upper corners enhance the effect, and the figures are deliberately out of proportion to one another, making it seems as if they are floating. This contributes to the painting's philosophical quality and makes it more enigmatic at the same time. Gauguin indicated that the painting should be read from right to left, with the three major figure groups illustrating the questions posed in the title. The three women with a child represent the beginning of life; the central group symbolizes the daily existence of young adulthood; and in the final group, according to the artist, "an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts," represents the end of the life cycle. Yet, as so often in Gauguin's work, the whole remains mysterious: "Explanations and obvious symbols would give the canvas a sad reality," Gauguin wrote, "And the questions asked [by the title] would no longer be a poem."